10 dharma books everyone should have, as selected by the editors of the Shambhala Sun. From our March 2015 DIY Dharma issue.
After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
by Jack Kornfield
(Bantam, 2000)
According to Jack Kornfield, enlightenment does exist and is even pretty common. The rub is that after achieving it, day-to-day tasks and troubles still await you. This is a [...]

As someone who spent far too much time hiding in my college’s library, devouring the stories, plays, and letters of Henry Miller, I am flabbergasted now to learn of the depth of Miller’s appreciation of and preoccupation with Buddhism. (Perhaps, given my age, I was focused more then with the more prurient aspects of his work. As Erica Jong once put it, using somewhat faint [...]

Iliana: A Winter Solstice Tale is the story of a little girl who lives with her family in the kingdom of Shambhala. The days start growing shorter and shorter, and people become afraid that they'll lose the sun forever. Iliana sets off alone to find it, and along her journey, she meets magical friends and ends up learning more than she ever imagined.
Written by Walter [...]

The trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens has just been released (watch it here), and to celebrate, we're sharing an excerpt from Matthew Bortolin's book, The Dharma of Star Wars. In the book, Bortolin, an ordainee of Thich Nhat Hanh, sorts through the films' spiritual themes and applies Buddhist teachings to George Lucas' epics.
Bortolin writes in the book: "In Star [...]

Pico Iyer – renowned author and world traveler – has written a new book called The Art of Stillness, which Kirkus Reviews has described as “[not] a meditation guide or a New-Age tract but rather a celebration of the age-old practice of sitting with no goal in mind and no destination in sight.” We reached out to the frequent Shambhala Sun contributor (see below for some links to [...]

Waking Up
A Guide to Spirituality without Religion
By Sam Harris
Simon & Schuster 2014; 256 pp., $26 (cloth)
The author of The End of Faith, Sam Harris is a scathing critic of religion and anything that he deems superstition. Yet he considers himself to be spiritual and has spent many years practicing meditation. As he explains it, human beings experience altered [...]

Andrew Sullivan, prolific blogger and former editor the The New Republic, gave a shout-out to award-winning novelist, filmmaker, Zen priest (and, Shambhala Sun contributor) Ruth Ozeki on Sunday. Sullivan noted how Ozeki weaves Buddhism into her writing in natural, subtle ways, and also her "shifty" concept of self.
The interview, from the LA Review of Books, is an [...]

Then look no further -- in our new, September 2014 magazine, Andrea Miller tells you about the latest books from Tom Robbins and Peter Matthiessen, a re-release of Nyanaponika Thera's classic Heart of Buddhist Meditation, and more. Click here to read. (And once you're there, click any book's bibliographical information to purchase directly from its publisher.)
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Author Paul Garrigan tells how Buddhist monks in a Thai temple helped him to drop his drinking, and even the very idea that he was an addict.
In 2006, I entered an addiction treatment program in Thailand. I did this in the hope of curing a problem that had been making my life miserable for almost two decades. I felt full of despair and saw the monastery as my last chance. That [...]

"Without realizing it, we continually put up protective walls made of opinions, prejudices, and strategies, barriers that are built on a deep fear of being hurt. These walls are further fortified by emotions of all kinds: anger, craving, indifference, jealousy, and arrogance.
"But fortunately for us, the soft spot — our innate ability to love and to care about things — is like [...]